Thursday, June 14, 2007

Irrationality

In the introduction to his book, Stuart Sutherland offers some sample questions to demonstrate to the reader that rational thinking is sporadic at best. Some are subjective ("Are you a better than average driver?") -- here are the more objective questions:
  1. Which is more likely -- that a mother with blue eyes has a daughter with blue eyes or that a daughter with blue eyes has a mother with blue eyes?
  2. Are there more words beginning with the letter 'k' than with 'k' as the third letter?
  3. Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by a factor of ten and of fatal heart disease by a factor of two: do more smokers die of lung cancer than of heart disease?
  4. Do more people die of strokes than of accidents?
  5. Which is more dangerous, cycling or riding the Big Wheel?
  6. Consider two maternity hospitals, one averaging forty-five births a day, the other fifteen: in which hospital is it more likely that on any given day 60 per cent of births will be boys?
I wrote down six answers and expect to find the author's correct answers as I read on.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007